The Baby Nobody Wanted and the King Who Did

Far from home, by a river in Babylon, Ezekiel gathered God's people close and told them a picture-story. It went like this.

There was once a baby. Brand-new, only hours old. Nobody washed her. Nobody wrapped her warm. Nobody held her close and whispered, "There you are. I am so glad you came."

Nobody wanted her at all.

So they carried her out to an open field and laid her down in the long grass. And they walked away. They left her there, all alone, with the cold wind blowing and the tall weeds leaning over her, and not one person in all the world who loved her.

But somebody came walking through that field.

A King.

He was not looking for treasure, or a strong soldier, or a clever helper. But he heard a tiny, trembling cry, and he stopped, and he pushed back the long grass. There she was. The baby nobody wanted.

The King knelt down in the dirt beside her. He looked at that little forgotten one, shivering and crying in the cold, and his whole heart went out to her. And he said one word. One strong, warm word that changed everything.

"Live."

Live, little one. Live and grow. You are not forgotten now.

He lifted her up. He washed her and held her and kept her safe. He watched her grow tall, and he gave her his own name, and he set a crown on her head, this child who had been thrown away in a field. He made her his very own.

That was always the kind of love the King had. A love that comes looking. A love that climbs right down into the cold grass to find the one nobody came back for.

But when that little girl grew up, she did not always love the King back. Sometimes she ran from him. Sometimes she forgot whose she was. She forgot so badly that the glory had to grieve its way out of her beautiful temple and wait on the hill east of the city, like you saw on the last page. And still he would not stop. His love was stubborn. It would not let her go.

"That King is God," Ezekiel told them, there by the river. "And the baby in the field is you."

Hundreds of years later, God did more than tell that story. He stepped inside it. Jesus walked out into our cold, forgotten world himself, looking for every single one who had been left behind. He knelt down in the dirt beside us. He came all the way from heaven to find the unwanted, and the unloved, and the ones who run away.

And over each one of us, with his arms open wide, he says the same strong word:

"Live."